MAY 12 2024 | The Gospel of John S3E6 | The Original Stanley

Sea Change Church · MAY 12 2024 | The Gospel of John – S3 Ep 6: The Original Stanley
John 4:13-26
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

trusting us to fill this special role in your creation. Thank you for being our strength as we do our best to always serve your will. Please touch each mother, aunt, sister, daughter, and friend here today, God. Let them know that your grace is always enough. Help us to honor you by honoring them today and every day. In Jesus' name, amen. The Gospel according to John, chapter 4, verses 13 through 26.

Jesus answered, Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life. The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water. He told her, Go, call your husband and come back.

I have no husband, she replied. Jesus said to her, You're right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you've had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you've just said is quite true. Sir, the woman said, I can see that you're a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem. Jesus declared, Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know.

We worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth. The woman said, I know that Messiah, called Christ, is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us. Then Jesus declared, I who speak to you am he. This is the word of the Lord.

God is spirit, and his goodness is coming. God is spirit, and his grace is coming. God is spirit, and his grace is coming. God called trouble, didn't miss you being lost on the water. Good morning and happy Mother's Day to all you moms that are out there, my mom especially, over here somewhere. What's up, mom? I see you over there. And I found out that if you are a mom right now, the gift for moms of the day, if you've not seen these, is the Stanley Cup.

Now, I borrowed this. You might be a Yeti cup person or something like that. I found this out. This is Pastor Vinny's, actually. And I actually told my mom about this cup. So I don't know if you know about the Stanley. The Stanley Cup is actually the old company that made all the tools. So I had said to my mom like three months ago, hey, would you like one of these Stanley Cups?

And my mom says, you mean Stanley, the company that used to come to my door in the 50s and try to sell me tools? I'm like, yeah, that's the one. And she says, well, if I wanted the jacuzzi to carry around to get a drink, I'd just bring that. So I said, I guess I'm not going to get her the Stanley Cup. So she was a little salty on that one. Vinny said that, because we said, hey, you're drinking out of a chick cup is what we said at the staff meeting.

He goes, no, I just get rid of the straw and then I just use it like a sippy cup. And then somebody said, yeah, but sippy cups are for babies, Vinny. So a little shade on Vinny, but thank you, Vinny, for the thing. If you're going to see what I did with the sermon title, why am I talking about Stanley Cups? It's called the original Stanley because we're at the well.

And to see what I did there, and Jesus is talking to this woman at the well. And what's she drinking? Last week's sermon was entitled The Thirst Trap. So if you get that one. So it's been quite a feisty sermon title analogies. We've got a couple things we're going to look at here. Jesus is speaking to this woman about satisfaction. You know, with Stanley Cups, it's interesting.

It's all about finding the mug that fits your look. So people have multiple $40 mugs to fit their look. But oftentimes we don't think about what's in the mug. And what Jesus is saying to her is, you're the well, but what is in the well and what you're sourcing for your satisfaction, is it coming from an eternal or is it coming from a temporal place?

And so he really gets to the heart of the matter with this woman. We're at week two of this. If you missed week one, you can go back and look at that. There's two points I'm going to hit today. One is no one's thirst was ever satisfied by a dry well. That's the first point. The second one, don't drink from dirty wells. And so how do we pollute the wells in our life?

And those wells, this is a metaphor, right, Jesus is using. The well, he's talking about the Holy Spirit. He's talking about eternal life. He's putting that in there. He's talking about something that gives deep satisfaction. We live in an unsatisfied world where people are looking for satisfaction. They're trying to find something to unite to, some cause to get behind, to give themselves meaning.

And Jesus says, I want to give you something that's going to give you a deep, deep meaning and will bring you satisfaction. Look at the first one. Remember the first point. Go to verse 13. No one was ever satisfied by a dry well. Jesus answered in verse 13, everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. Circle thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.

Indeed, the water I give him will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life. Well, it's interesting. I want you to circle spring of water as well. Well, Jesus continues on this analogy about four chapters later, and that spring has a metamorphosis to it. We'll get to what that is. But what Jesus is saying is he is giving you something that will become eternal and will well up within you.

It will well up within you and become that thing. And so what he's doing here is he's juxtaposing the thing that she's going after to satisfy her life, the well that she's going to on a regular basis versus what he wants to fill the well with, which is himself, which is his spirit. As you look at it, he gets right to the heart of the matter. Go to verse 18.

He's having this conversation with her, and he says to her, excuse me, verse, yeah, verse 18. He says to her, actually, I want to go before that. Let's go a little bit higher. Go to verse 15. The woman said to him, sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty, and I have to keep coming back here to draw water. He told her, go call your husband and come back.

He just, man, boom, right to the point of where she is in her life. And then she answers this in verse 17. I have no husband, she replied. Jesus, that's a simple answer. Jesus said to her, you're right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, facts, Jesus is getting the facts, right? The fact is, you've had five husbands. And the man you have right now is not your husband.

Now, she probably thought that was a secret. We're assuming. Because she is overwhelmed at Jesus' knowledge of her life. And she knows that Jesus has never been in her town because it's a Samaritan town. He's meeting her on the outskirts of a Samaritan village. Remember last week, the Samaritans and the Jews were separated. They're not supposed to be talking.

And Jesus is doing some radical inclusion here. But with inclusion, he's offering assimilation. He's saying, you need to make some changes because I want to assimilate you. And he's reaching out to this woman. But he gets right to the fact is, and he talks about her, what is filling her well. And what is interesting is that in the metaphor that Jesus is using, we are not the water.

A lot of Eastern religion, a lot of New Age religion, a lot of others will tell you that deep within, somewhere inside yourself, there is this power that is you and it is, you know, it is manifest. You can manifest your truth. And it's all coming from this place within. This is not Christianity. The gospel doesn't say you're the water. The gospel says you're the well.

The gospel says you're the Stanley Cup. And what you are filling that with is what actually matters. And what he brings up to her is you're filling it with relationships. You're filling this. The thing that you are using, that you are using to fill your deepest need is relationships, particularly relationships with men. She's had five husbands. I don't know what has happened.

If she's off them and, you know, it's like a 48 hours crime thing or one of those crime dramas. I don't know what has happened to her. She's got five husbands. You know, I told you last week, my wife is having a hard enough time with just one. Imagine having five. That would be the worst. And not only does she have five husbands, she's got, you know, somebody on the side now.

She's got a side hustle going as well. What is interesting is after the third husband, you might figure that she would stop trying to get husbands. But we have this tendency to keep going back to wells that don't satisfy us on a regular basis. And so she is going to this well. And it's interesting because when God created human beings, he created them with a bit of a design flaw, if I can say that.

And the design flaw is this, that he created us to enjoy things that are temporal, but he made it so those temporal things will never completely satisfy us. And so we end up with three husbands, four husbands, five husbands, fifth husband, man on the side. She might, you know, she's obviously not married to that other one. And Jesus goes right to the heart of the matter.

And he says, but what about all this that you've been trying to fill your life with? I guess the question that this begs, because the best thing you can do when you preach is to put people in the story. So it's easy to see this woman, like I said from Nacho Libre last week, as a floozy, you know. She is just a floozy that is, you know, can be discarded, and she's nothing like us.

But she's very much like us. And let's put yourself in the story here, beside that well, where Jesus isn't talking about your five husbands, because you haven't had five husbands. But he's talking about this other thing that you fill your well with. It could be fame. It could be vanity. It could be money. It could be whatever the thing is. We all have a well that we keep going back to on a regular basis.

And the question is, why do we continue to do things when there is this thing called the law of diminishing returns, that is an economic law, but it is the way that God has created humankind. Whatever you go after will not satisfy you. It will satisfy you for a moment, but it won't continue to satisfy you. My daughter and I have been working, my daughter Lucy and I, have been working on to create the best blondie in town.

Now, I actually, if you don't know what a blondie is, I actually saw a blondie in concert last night, different blondie. But in cooking, great show for a 79-year-old. She was just rocking, couldn't believe it. But we were making this food, and if you've ever had a blondie, a blondie is the opposite of a brownie. It's exactly like a brownie, but you just don't put cocoa powder in it.

So we've been really working on this. And I want to tell you, when it comes to being satisfied, the first, like, two or three are amazing. By the time I get to the 15th brownie, or blondie, it's rough, right? Rough, but I'll still look at it. I'll be like, oh, oh, that blondie is so good. I'll just have another one, you know? Well, that's what she's doing with husbands.

I'd stick to the blondies, tell you the truth. And so we all have this thing, right? And Jesus is, what he's offering her is a different thing to satisfy. And so we'll often have, if you're having trouble right now, thinking, well, I don't know if I have a blondie in my life, or a five-husband thing, or I don't have a well, or anything like that, I will tell you how you can find out.

This is the crux of the matter. You have to think about the thing that consumes your thought. If it's your work, if it's your money, if it's your five husbands, whatever the thing is, we tend to consume, and this is, go to the well, what consumes us. The thing that consumes you, your thoughts, your mind, the thing you think about the most, approval from other people, whatever the thing could be, that's your well, generally speaking.

And I wrote that the thing that we tend to consume, what consumes us. Go to verse 13 again. I just want to, I want to re, I want to re, I want to re, for all the volleyball players, I want to set verse 13 and 14 up again before I give this analogy. Verse 13 says, Jesus answered, everyone, not some of you, that's you too. You can just put your name there if you want, instead of everyone.

Who drinks this water will be thirsty again. That's that temporal. But whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst, which is a big offer. Indeed, the water I give him will become a spring of water, welling up to eternal life. That thing, it is just amazing how often we keep going after things that don't satisfy us. In 1965, there was a song that came out by a band.

You might have heard of them. They're called The Rolling Stones. And there was a song called Satisfaction. It's really ironic, too, because if you think about anyone who has spent their life going after satisfaction, it's Mick Jagger, mate. It is Mick Jagger. No one has gone after satisfaction like Mick Jagger, right? And after continuing to go after satisfaction, he writes this in his single.

When I'm riding around the world, and I'm doing this, and I'm singing that, and I'm trying to make some girl who tells me, baby, better come back, baby, better come back maybe next week, because you see I'm on a losing streak. Here we go. I can't get no. I can't get no. I can't get no. I can't get no. Satisfaction. No satisfaction. No satisfaction. No satisfaction.

I can't get no. If anybody can get satisfaction, it's Mick Jagger, mate. I've got to tell you, if you're going to take a lesson from anybody, the person to take it from, to say that if you go after the things of this world, you are going to end up in 1965, like that, with no satisfaction. It's interesting, the time when this happened was after the 1950s.

Our culture tends to swing back. If you know history, our culture, we tend to think that the moment we're in it is going to be like forever, and it's only going to get worse. It doesn't really work that way. You usually have a really difficult time followed by a protest time followed by a time of gluttony. So you had 1950, World War I, 15, World War I.

After that, you had the Roaring Twenties, right? Then you had the Depression, World War II, the 1950s, right? And then you had Vietnam, protest, 1980s. I'm a product of the 1980s. It happens over and over again. What is interesting is after the 1950s, he's singing that to a generation who understands him. And some of you grew up in the 50s, and you understand we had everything, but we couldn't get no satisfaction.

And if you look around at the world today, Jesus would probably be saying the same thing to the world today, that I want to offer you something. In the world right now, everything is on offer. Is there anything in America right now that is not on offer? Is there anything? Sexually, is there anything materially? Is there any? Whatever you want, you can have it, and no one's going to throw shade on you.

And we have an epidemic of unhappiness, dissatisfaction, suicidality over and over and over again because they can't get no satisfaction. What Jesus says is I have something that's going to satisfy. But as believers, we've got to drink from the right well because if we continue to go back to the wells that don't satisfy, the ones that were built not to satisfy, the ones that have a law of diminishing returns, when he's offering a full well that will satisfy forever, then we have nothing left to give.

You notice when he talks about this well, he says that the well will actually bubble over. If you go to verse 14, whoever drinks the water I will give him will never thirst. Indeed, I will give him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. It wells up, and there's other scriptures that says it overflows. You will know that if you are drinking from the right well, that people around you will be sustained with life-giving sustenance by the way you live.

You live one way or another. You live for yourself, and you've got nothing to offer anybody else. Or we can live where we have something that bubbles over because we're going to a different well that allows others to be sustained. I believe every believer, maybe there's seasons of darkness to the valley of the shadow of death. I get that. But I believe every believer should have a group of 5, 10, 15, 20 people around them that you're just giving life to, that you have so much life, that you are at the right well.

You're not trying to satisfy yourself with other wells, that you're just giving life to people. But when we continue to go to the wrong well, we're living a survival existence, and we have nothing to offer anyone else. We see that. Jesus talks about in John 7, 37 through 39. It's in your notes. He talks about what this water is. It is a metaphor. It means eternal life.

It means a whole bunch of things. But when he talks about what fills your cup, what fills your well, he's talking about the Holy Spirit. He's talking about God himself, the Spirit of God himself. I want to read that scripture. And it says, On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood up and said in a loud voice, Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.

Now, he had just had this conversation with this woman three chapters earlier. Right now? So we're three chapters away. We're in chapter 7. Whoever believes, that's faith, in me, as scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them. Do you see the metamorphosis there? He was talking about her, about a well that would bubble up, right?

But now you've got a river. You have a river. He's taking it to the next level. He's exponentially taking it from something that was bubbling up to a river. Remember early on when John, two chapters or one chapter ago, was baptizing people, and it said he had to go out into the Judean wilderness because there was plenty of water there so he could baptize everyone that was coming to him.

I think that there is enough need in the world right now that if we live like this, we need the river that flows from us to sustain a world that is broken, lost, and empty. Went to a concert last night. Went to the Rose Bowl, right? Got back at 1 in the morning. It was rough. Went to this 80s concert, okay? It was all 80s bands. I took my daughter. Had a great time.

Saw Adam Ant, Blondie, Simple Minds, Duran Duran. It was awesome. We're just running around. It was super cool. The Rose Bowl, never been there before. And the amount of, you saw, there's 40,000 people there. I haven't hung with a group. Like, I don't go to shows. Like, I don't go to, like, Coachella or anything like that. You know what I mean? Like, I'm just not that guy.

My back's killing me after a half hour, yet alone four hours. I'm standing there like this. People are pushing in. So if you're a concert person, God bless you. So we went. The emptiness, the amount of dope, like, oh my gosh, dude. Like, if anybody smokes any more dope by me, I can't stand that smell anymore. I used to love it, by the way, but I don't love it anymore.

The emptiness, I just haven't been around people like that. Like, I see a lot of people in the world and whatever, but I haven't been in, like, that. That's, like, concentrated, you know? Goth scene, all this other stuff that's going on. And I realize if we're gonna make a difference in this world, we gotta not just have an eyedropper of what Jesus has to offer.

We've gotta be a river. We've gotta be a river. I really wanna be a river. This week I was taking some time to do some liminal thinking, my friend. So that's when you have time to think about things you don't get to think about much. I just began, what do I want more of in my life? What do I want less of in my life? And I just began to identify. I wanna be more simple.

I wanna spend more time with Christ. We have got to be that river that is there. And he talks about this. It finishes up in verse 39 of that passage. It's in your notes, John 7. When he's speaking about the water, he says, by this he meant, so you don't have to interpret this. It tells you exactly what it means. By this he meant the spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.

Up to that time the spirit had not been given since Jesus has not yet been glorified. What I said a minute ago is we're not called to be the water. We're called to be the well. You are called to be the modern day ark of the covenant. What do I mean by that? Have you ever seen Raiders of the Lost Ark with Indiana Jones? If he would have just understand biblical history, he wouldn't have looked for the ark.

He would have just gone to a church with believers that were filled with the spirit. The ark of the covenant that the Jews used to carry around and move around, it actually, I was reading in 1 Samuel how it got taken by the Philistines and moved into Gaza early on. It's in the first 10 chapters of Samuel somewhere in there. And then it comes back from Ashdod, which is where we were there about a year ago, a little bit about nine months ago.

So that ark of the covenant was filled with God's spirit. It was a well that was filled with the spirit. God's desire was not to be in an ark. God's desire was to be within us so that we become the ark of the covenant. The New Testament talks about this, vessels of the living God. Mary actually was a precursor to that. Mary, the mother of God, happy Mother's Day to Mary, the mother of God.

God, she was the ark of the covenant. She was a prototype ark of the covenant. Why? Because she carried Jesus within herself. It went from an ark that was in a box, then it went into an ark that was Jesus that was actually within a woman. So the spirit of God was within her but was not consuming her soul like it is on Pentecost. The Holy Spirit comes down.

And now, through faith, the Holy Spirit enters into us and you become the modern day ark of the covenant. That's the gospel. When you have that and you're in tap with that, you have a river to feed the lost and broken people of this world because they need more than an eyedropper of faith from us. So we become the river, we become the well but not the water.

Next thing I want to think, there's a Greek word in here. Go to verse 14. Verse 14 says, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. That word drinks, the English doesn't really do it justice. So the Greek word there for drinks is pinno, fun word, fun word to say, pinno. And that word is in that thing called the errorist tense. The errorist tense means kind of like past tense.

When you speak it in English, it looks like it's a definitive one drink. So Jesus saying, look, I got this perfect solution. You just take one little sip. You never have to do a Bible study again. You don't have to pray. You've just gonna, it's just gonna well up. It's a one time definitive drinks. Well, that's not the errorist tense in this pinno word.

The errorist tense actually means it's past tense like drinks but it doesn't have an ending to it. So what Jesus isn't saying is, you take one drink and you're satisfied forever. What he's saying is keep drinking and what you will continue to drink will keep you hydrated that you continue to do that. I think the best analogy, you've ever, you see people carrying these things and we had a woman, I won't call her out and throw shade on her.

She brought one, it was like this big to a small group and I'm like, you should bring a sponge with that because you could just clean up afterwards or whatever. She was going after it. Have you ever noticed how people are just like, why do they never get thirsty? Because they're constantly drinking. That word, he who drinks, is assuming that we are continuing to resource an eternal help.

So when, you know, you never feel thirsty, why? Because you're always sourcing. You're always drinking. If you have any Muslim friends or Jewish friends, one of the things you'll notice about them is they tend to pray more with more regularity than most Christians. Three times a day, I've been in Australia, I've been in Europe and all of a sudden I'll come around a corner and there'll be a group of men that have pulled out, you know, prayer mats and have put them there and they're just praying.

They're on their knees and they're praying and it's something that they're constantly trying to source a connection spiritually. I think that's what Jesus is talking about. That we are regularly doing that as a group, as a people. I don't think it's just five minutes in the morning. It's he who continues to drink is the one who never gets thirsty. Why do you never get thirsty?

Because you're constantly hydrating yourself. It isn't a one-time thing is what we see and so that's the first. Matthew 5, 6 says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. For what? They will be satisfied. Wish we could have got Mick Jagger that a little earlier in his career. I want to close up with the second point. Don't drink from dirty wells.

Go to verse 23 and 24. Yet, a time is coming and that's going to be symbolized next week which is Pentecost when the Holy Spirit comes. If you want to be baptized next week, we're going to baptize people here in the service so get baptized, talk to Pastor Joshua. A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth for they are the kind of worshiper the Father seeks.

God is spirit and his worshipers must worship him in spirit and in truth. This is a redirect by Jesus. Why? Because the woman had redirected Jesus. Jesus got to her well. Five husbands and some side hustle. He had gotten to the thing that she was going to and all of a sudden she's like, yeah, but what about the temple in Jerusalem? Redirect. You know, what about, you know, worshiping this and all of a sudden she just brings up all this stuff that doesn't get to the heart of what it's all about.

It doesn't get to the simplicity of what actually is going to change her life. She redirects and all of a sudden she starts polluting the essence of what Jesus was trying to bring to her. He's trying to bring her life change and she starts directing about everything else. I think this is really important and I added this point and I wasn't going to have it in here but I added it because I think in a culture that is super divided, especially amongst believers, we really want to stick to the essence of what matters.

But what about Jesus? But what about Jesus? I have people all the time, whenever I talk to people about, I tell them I'm a Christian or whatever, they want to talk to me about everything but Jesus. They want to talk about the Crusades. They want to talk about human sexuality. They want to talk about da, da, da, da, da, da. And I'll just say, can you tell me one thing that Jesus has ever said that you disagree with?

Well, they can't because they never read Jesus. They don't know the writings of Jesus. I'll say, go educate yourself and come back with something Jesus said that you disagree with and let's talk about Jesus. It is a redirect back to the essence. I put the Samaritan woman wanted to talk about non-essentials, where the temple was, you know, but Jesus only cared about the essence.

The woman wanted to talk about non-essentials, but Jesus only cared about the essence. I think there's two practical points. One, how do you get back to the essence of your faith? I mean, really to the essence. What does a really simple essence look like for your faith? What is a beautiful, I think simplicity is the most beautiful thing when it comes to faith.

The more we get into the abstract, and there is time for the abstract, the more we get into the rules, the more we get into all these other side things, the more we miss the essence of how much he loves you, and he wants to fill you with a well that will become a river. He wants to sup with you. He wants to sit by quiet waters with you. He wants to, you know, run with you in the fields of your dreams, and he cares for you.

This is the essence of the faith. But we always get away. In 634, let me give you a great example of this. In 634, there's these beautiful Celtic Christians that had been for a few hundred years on the east of England in a place called Whitby, right? They were Celtic, they were Irish, and they were there. And then the Roman Christians came in, and so you had the Roman Christians, and then you had, and they just, they couldn't really get along, right?

They couldn't figure out the essence. So there was this castle there at Whitby. It was in Bram Stoker's Dracula, and so that was the same one they used there. It was not a castle, it was a monastery. And they went, and they had a thing called the Synod of Whitby. And at the end of it, they decided to split, and they split the entire church because they couldn't get along anymore, right?

And so all the Celtic Christians went back to Ireland, and the Romans won the day. The Roman Christians won the day. And let me tell you the two things that they were dealing with. One was the date of Easter, when Easter is, okay? That's number one. That was number one. They couldn't figure out what day Easter was gonna be celebrated on. And the second one was the tonsure.

Now, if you don't know what a tonsure is, it's a monk's haircut, okay? So, the Celtic Christians wear, excuse me, the Roman Christians wear a tonsure like this, so you shave the back of your head in a little circle. You've seen that before, right? But the cooler, more, you know, I think, alternate punk rock one is the one that the Celtics wore. They would just shave the whole front of the head and go mull it in the back, right?

They split the church for that. Sent out a whippy. Go look it up. Split the church. We can split things because of things that are non-essential. I wanna tell you, in your relationships, in your family, with your wife, even on non-biblical issues, stick to the essence. I know that I love this woman. I know that I love this man. Whatever it is, stick to the essence of what things are because when you get to the essence, to the simplicity, it actually boils down all those different things and gets you to what matters.

The only analogy I could think of about essence and why it matters is for Christmas I'm hard to buy for. So I asked for one thing. I asked for this, right? Because I wanna smell like 1985, okay? That's what I'm about. This is polo. There's two types of polo, right? I've only worn two colognes for 20 years. It's Obsession and polo, okay? The only ones I wear. This is not the one you think it of.

There are two types. One is called Eau de Parfum, okay? Parfum. This is 140 bucks. Now, I would never buy this for myself but I'll let my family buy it for Christmas for me, okay? So I ordered this one. This is called Eau de Parfum. Eau de Parfum has, and I'm not pronouncing it if you speak French, I apologize, has three to five percent essential oils in it, okay?

So I found out there's tobacco oil in this. There's patouli and that's before the millennials ruined patouli because they don't know how to use it. There's patouli in here. There's all this stuff. The next one down and you're still gonna pay 85 for it is called Eau de what? Toilette. You know what that means? It means toilet, right? Okay, it's still good. You're gonna pay 85 bucks if there's a lot more alcohol.

Why am I telling you all that about all this? Why am I doing this research of Eau de Parfum? By the way, now that I'm here, there you go. You gotta be careful with it. We gotta be careful with that because I want the essence of what matters. I want the essence of what Jesus is offering in that well. What he is offering is that he loves you. It says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

You know, Jesus loves the world and all the little children of the world. I mean, little things like that, the things that matter, that he cares for you deeply, that he cares for your heart, that he wants to sit by you and know you and spend time with you. And there's other things that are important but they're not the essence. We wanna be a church of the essence.

We wanna be a people of the essence. And we wanna be a people of the fragrance of God. And you will know the fragrance when you are spending time with the fragrance and you are filling it because out of the heart the mouth speaks. And some of us are so parched, so dehydrated, so dying from thirst, we have nothing to offer the humans that are walking around this earth, all of humanity that is looking for answers in every cause and everything but nothing that actually satisfies.

Two takeaways today then is this. Number one, stay hydrated on the things of the spirit. Stay hydrated. This is a little challenge I said. Every time you see somebody with a Stanley cup and they're gonna go away here in another year or so probably. Every time you see someone with one of these big Yeti cups or something, offer a prayer. Open up your scripture.

Just do it. Just every time, you're gonna be busy. I'm just gonna tell you, you're gonna be busy. Stay hydrated. This is this word, pinno. It is this word that he has given you eternal water. Let's dive into that. And then the next thing, stop drinking from dirty wells. Dirty wells are when we pollute the essence of what God is saying with something that is arbitrary or to the side of it and we miss the thing that matters most.

I read an article from the USDA that 80% of our groundwater ! It's polluted with pharmaceuticals. 80%! That's a lot. I don't wanna drink someone else's Prozac, you know what I'm saying? But you can't get rid of it because it is polluting our water system. What Jesus is saying here is don't pollute what I'm telling you about. It's not about the temple. There are people that are gonna worship in spirit and in truth.

And if you find yourself on every other issue, upset about every political thing, da-da-da, but you cannot bring them the essence of the heart, the beating heart of God, the love for them, then you have nothing to offer them. That's what the world needs. That's the ribbon they need to drink from. Not some little eye drop in your opinions on politics. Not that those things can't be talked about.

That's not the essence. Let's get to the essence. Amen? Let's stand if you would. I'm gonna have Chris come forward. She's gonna lead us in a little closing song before I bless you. I'm also gonna ask our prayer team to come forward right now. If you need prayer, you can come up during the song or after. Or if you wanna know Jesus, we will lead you to Jesus.

And we will have you be baptized next week. We got a tub behind me. If you don't believe me, come back next week. If you are drinking from a well that is not satisfying you and you wanna change that over, come forward. The people that'll be here in the front will pray for you and we wanna see you filled with the spirit. Amen? All right. Chris, lead us away.

Amen. You're worthy of it all. You're worthy of it all. You're worthy of it all. For from you are all things and to you are all things. You deserve the glory. You are worthy. You're worthy of it all. You are worthy. You're worthy of it all. For from you are all things. And to you are all things. You deserve the glory. Oh, Friday night, we have a night with a pastor friend of mine from Nigeria.

Pastor Bishop Collins is gonna be here. We're gonna have the elders here. If you want some more of the spirit, we're gonna have healing service. You wanna come hang out It's Pentecost weekend. Come this coming Friday night. Get a piece of the Spirit. If you extend your hands, I want to pray for you. I want to bless you tonight, today. Lord Jesus, I want to bless your people, God, with your Spirit.

I pray the Spirit of God on the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. The boundary lines will fall in pleasant places for you and that you will be satisfied. If you're not getting any satisfaction, we pray that the satisfaction of God, you will be satisfied. And you begin to go to the right well. Looking for the well of his comfort, the well of his consolation, the well of his Spirit.

God, well that up in us. And we just bless you now. We send you out as an army of God's consolation and love. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Hey, mothers, we got gifts for you. We've got a photo booth. Go do that. If you need prayer, please come forward. We love you. See you next week.